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Eco-Dog

Helping to save a furry friend is all in a day's work for this pooch. Meet Maya, - the koala scat detection dog - a super-sleuth pup with a unique skill set. Her job? To sniff out Koala poo. Maya's amazing speed and accuracy enables scientists to better survey koala habitats, health and population numbers.

Duration: 8min 18sec

Broadcast:
Tue 26 Apr 2016, 12:00am

Published:
Tue 26 Apr 2016, 12:00am

Transcript

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IF YOU'D LIKE TO HELP CROWD FUND DOGS FOR DETECTION, SEE THE LINK AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE HEADED RELATED INFO

NARRATION

This koala may look content but he's facing an uncertain future.

Dr Celine Frere

In South East Queensland, population seems to be on the decline, severe decline.

NARRATION

It's estimated more than 80% of koala populations in this area have already been lost - disease, dog attacks and road strikes all taking a toll. But the greatest threat is their vanishing habitat.

Dr Romane Cristescu

Basically there's a certain amount of habitat that is available for animal to live in. We often have to make a choice where to put a road or a new development, and so that's decreasing their habitat.

NARRATION

These scientists are on a mission to identify and protect the areas where koalas still live, and have enlisted the help of a new four-legged recruit. Meet Maya, the world's first and only koala scat detection dog - a supersleuth pup with a unique skill set.

Dr Romane Cristescu

So, Maya's job is to help us human do a better job finding koala poo.

NARRATION

Did she say koala poo?

Dr Celine Frere

The great thing with dogs is they can smell what we can't see. Koala poo smells very much of eucalyptus, and so they can help us locate scats very easily.

Dr Romane Cristescu

Is that your ball? You want it? You are ready? You are ready? Find, Maya, find.

NARRATION

Weaving back and forth, nose to the ground, Maya searches the undergrowth. But why search for scat and not koalas themselves? Koalas are cryptic creatures. Their low numbers and cunning camouflage makes them notoriously hard to find, but they poo up to 150 times a day.

Dr Romane Cristescu

And the poo stay in the environment for many months, sometimes years, which mean that if you arrive in a site and there's no koala, you may find the evidence on the ground, and that tells you that's koala habitat.

Dr Romane Cristescu

Find, Maya.

Dr Celine Frere

Koalas move around, so you don't only want to protect the habitat where they feed. You need to protect the habitat where they sleep, where they move. And it's a much bigger habitat than we think of.

NARRATION

This gives scientists a more complete picture, as they can see all the places where koalas have been, not just where they are.

Dr Romane Cristescu

Where is it? Where is it? Do you see? She just pointed at it with her nose and then she dropped. You're such a good girl, Maya. Well done.

NARRATION

A job well done is rewarded with play.

Dr Romane Cristescu

You're such a good girl, Maya.

If you think about it, dogs don't go to work for a salary, they go to work because for them it's play.

NARRATION

And while Maya loves her job, the researchers love her results.

Dr Romane Cristescu

You can see how small they are and they're so easily obscured in the litter, so for a human to see that is really hard. Maya, Maya!

Dr Celine Frere

You need a lot of stamina because you have to cover a lot of ground and look under each tree for scats. For Maya that's not a problem. She's playing and she has high stamina, so she's 20 times faster at finding the scats. But most importantly for conservation, she's 150% more accurate, so that means that she's finding scats where humans are not and for habitat protection, this is critical.

Dr Romane Cristescu

When we tested her against a team of humans doing the same survey in the same area under the same trees, she actually found 30% more of the site with koala presence. If you're missing 30% of their habitat, you have no chance of protecting it. That's actually a really big bias. It's actually frightening.

NARRATION

Maya's accuracy and efficiency is giving scientists a powerful new tool for koala conservation.

Dr Romane Cristescu

That should do us, eh?

Dr Celine Frere

That should be fine. The scat can also tell the scientists about koalas themselves, and this sample will be taken back to the lab for analysis.

Dr Romane Cristescu

You're such a good girl, Maya. Well done.

NARRATION

But Maya's story wasn't always so bright. Before she was on the job saving koalas, Maya was just an hour away from death row.

Dr Romane Cristescu

So, we met Maya in the pound and she was actually abandoned there. And because she was so obsessed by her tennis ball, she was deemed not rehomeable. So she was actually going to be put down.

NARRATION

Thankfully for Maya, the qualities that make a less than perfect pet are exactly what the team were looking for.

Dr Romane Cristescu

It was a win-win for her. She got a second family, and for us, we pretty much got the best detection dog we could wish for.

Dr Celine Frere

Alright, so let's start with the koala.

Man

Yep.

Dr Celine Frere

So that's position number 26.

NARRATION

To stay at the top of her game, Maya must constantly hone her sniffing skills, so she undergoes regular training. Today's test will see how well she can tell one type of poo from another.

Dr Celine Frere

So it's very simple 'cause we don't want to take her in the bush and for her to start indicating on possum poo or eastern grey poo. We want to make sure that Maya knows what koala poo is and exclude any other marsupial poo.

Dr Celine Frere

And number 30 you've got one bat poo. A discrimination trial, it's a very important part of the trialling and training of our dogs. The way that we do this is we have 30 spots around a circle. We use a computer to generate random numbers so that we will put different types of poos at different locations for each different trials.

Dr Romane Cristescu

Ready? You ready? Find!

NARRATION

Changing up the position each time prevents this cluey canine from learning and remembering the location of the koala poo. They even put some empty containers to keep her on her toes.

Dr Romane Cristescu

Maya, Maya. You want the ball, Maya? Ready? Find, Maya. Find.

NARRATION

The test also helps the researchers learn more about detection dogs.

Dr Romane Cristescu

Basically, no method is perfect in science. So, we always want to trial, test, and understand the limitation of the method we're using. We're not always 100%, and probably dogs aren't either. So, we just want to really understand whether they have good days and bad days, and just make sure we integrate that in the result of the research.

Romane Cristescu

Good girl, Maya. Yeah!

NARRATION

Back in the lab, the scat is analysed.

Dr Celine Frere

From the scats, we can find out a lot about the animal and you can tell a story.

NARRATION

This is because when the poo passes through the koala's bowel, it actually collects little bits of DNA.

Dr Celine Frere

Can extract genomic DNA, and that tells us... I can have a fingerprint about an individual. I can know its sex, if it's a female or a male. We can also extract things like diet. We are also looking at chlamydia disease, genetic diversity, reproduction, and other factors.

NARRATION

This information helps answer the bigger questions of the team's research. Is there a link between human pressures, koala health, and their population decline?

Dr Celine Frere

And can we, at certain point, find this threshold, this tipping point, where suddenly the habitat in which they live is too urbanised that it stresses them so much that then their immunity crashes and disease takes over. Maya's key to this. We couldn't do what we do if we weren't using detection dogs.